


Toothache

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Blood, Canon Era, Gen, M/M, Originally posted on David-Jacobs-would, tooth extraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 03:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14946624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Jack has a toothache, and David tries his hand at the fine art of amateur dental surgery.





	Toothache

The first time that Jack mentioned his toothache he did it so casually that David really shouldn’t have thought anything of it.  David’s knowledge of who he was dealing with was the only problem there.  Jack Kelly was just about the kind of person who could walk around with his head half severed from his neck, and claim it was fine as long as he still had a sliver of skin and a bandana to hold himself together with. 

“It ain’t nothing really, Davey.  Just a bum tooth.  Race got one a while back and moaned about it for a couple of days before it went away on its own,” Jack said, rubbing his neck as he spoke. 

“Have you thought of going to see a dentist?” asked David.  “You could even go to a barber and get it pulled.” 

Jack shook his head at that, and patted David on the shoulder.  “Nah, it’ll be fine.  It ain't even bothering me much.  Just that I’m thinking about it, you know.  Let’s get selling and I’ll be alright again” 

David watched Jack as he sold throughout the day, and though he would occasionally touch his right cheek, he still managed to call out headlines with his usual energy. 

—

The next day was much the same, though Jack did ask David if a tooth could make your neck and ear hurt.  

“It can,” Les piped up.  “You can even die from a bad tooth.  That’s why you’ve gotta brush your teeth every night.  Sarah said so.  Some other kids sell their teeth to a fairy, only it isn’t a fairy, just their mom and dad.  Don't know why our folks don't wanna play along.” 

“That don’t seem fair,” Jack said. 

“It isn’t,” was Les’ emphatic response. 

“No, I mean that your mom and pop gotta pay money for your teeth.  You’d think they’d of earned ‘em if they was any good at being parents.”  Jack shook his head as though to clear it.  He’d looked thoughtful for a moment, before apparently deciding that thoughtful was not the way he wanted to be. 

“ _Do_ you brush your teeth?”  David asked.  Jack gave him a look like he’d just said something that was either insulting or remarkably dumb.   
“’Course I do.  All the time.  It’s sorta important… to not dying.”  He rubbed the back of his neck, before adjusting his cowboy hat a little higher up over his head so David couldn’t quite catch his facial expression.   

—

The third day found Jack dreadfully preoccupied.  Every time David looked over at him he was touching his cheek or rubbing distractedly at his ear.  His mouth was also in a weird position, with his lower lip as far to the right as it could go, and his mouth open only a tiny bit as he sucked in air loudly. 

“Why are you doing that?”  David asked, copying Jack’s expression.  Something in David’s voice got the attention of Les, who had also been imitating Jack’s face, albeit for a different reason.  Les’ lips went slack, and his eyes went big as he stared up at Jack.

“You okay, Cowboy?”  Les asked.  Jack ruffled his hair. 

“Yeah, great.  Nothing to worry about kiddo.  The cold air just feels good on my tooth.”

“Which feels pretty terrible otherwise.  I’m right, aren’t I?  I know I’m right.” 

Jack didn’t answer David right away, just glared at him.  “You’re real clever, you know that?”  He said finally, his voice deadpan. 

“So we have to go to the barber’s after all,” said Les.

“I’ll come with you,”  David offered. 

“I’m not going to no barber’s.”  Jack stopped walking and stood stock still, like he was trying to emphasize the idea that he wasn’t going to budge on this matter.  His papers were still slung high over his shoulder, but everything else in his stance suggested a fight. 

“You’ll feel better if you do.” 

“Yeah, it’ll feel real good getting a tooth yanked out of my head.  I’m not a grandfather yet, I’d sorta like to keep them in my mouth for a couple more years.”

“You’d be a grandfather a lot quicker if you married Sarah,” Les suggested.  David chose to ignore that.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never lost a tooth before,” David asked instead. 

“What’s that even supposed to mean?  You ever lost a tooth before?”

“I have!”  Les said cheerfully.  Jack and David exchanged looks, and David wondered if they were both thinking about how baby teeth didn’t count.  David just shrugged. 

“You get hit a lot more than I do.” 

Jack rolled his eyes, “Right, and I hit back a lot better than you do, wanna give it a try?” 

David took a few steps back.  Usually Jack wouldn’t talk to him like that, and for a split second the menace in his voice was real, but then his shoulders slumped and he went back to pressing his hand against his cheek miserably.  David lay a cautious hand on Jack’s shoulder, then removed it when his friend spun around to face him.

“You could try punching me, if you want,”  Jack suggested.  “I guess it’s loose, sorta.  Betcha you’d knock it out and save me a few dollars.”  Jack made a punching motion with his fist, tried to smile, and then winced. 

David just stared at him as the sinking feeling that this was _not_ a joke swept over him. 

———-

“It ain’t about the money,” Jack insisted four days later.  Selling that day had been something more like a madcap race.  The pain in his mouth was making Jack even more unable to sit still than usual. The last few hours had been spent running around at a pace that made David and Les constantly breathless, and didn’t do much to aid them in the goal of pushing the hundred papes they’d bought between the three of them. 

“I’m not pulling your tooth.”  David crossed his arms, standing beside a pile of papers that should have been gone a long time ago, and wondering what exactly he _was_ going to do.  If he waited a couple of days would Jack become physically exhausted enough to be dragged to the barber shop, or would he go crazy, like an animal that’d been beaten one too many times?

“Why the hell not?  It’ll be easy.  I’d do it myself, but it’s hard to see what you’re doing when it’s your own damn mouth.” 

“I have no idea how to do it.  I’d make it worse.” 

Jack laughed. “ _Try_ and make it worse.  Just try.  I dare you.”  Jack lifted up his arms in mock surrender, but he couldn’t hold the position long before he was pacing again.

“I might accidentally break your jaw,” David warned.  “Then you wouldn’t be able to talk.  You wouldn’t be able to eat either, though I suppose it wouldn’t matter, because you wouldn’t have an awful lot of chance at making money since you’d be completely incapable of calling at headlines anyway.  How do you think I’d feel if you starved and it was my fault?” 

“You’d talk enough for the both of us.   Besides, didn’t that fancy ass school of yours teach you nothing?  What’d you do, spend the whole day sitting in circles and reading poetry?”

David scowled at Jack.  There hadn’t been any circles.  That would have been too chummy and laid back.  His poetry reading had been patently circle free, and Jack ought to have known that. 

“We didn’t learn how to pull teeth,” was all that David said. 

“Why?  Just cause you’se got enough cash to pay somebody to do every little thing for you don’t mean you can’t take the time to learn a practical skill.  Bad stuff can happen you know, like with your pop’s arm.  I wouldn’t make you pay to go to some quack barber’s.  Me, I’m a real friend.  I’d yank out your tooth for you in an instant.”

“So it is about the money.”  David made to touch Jack’s arm, but he was out of David’s reach before he could even get close, pacing like he’d been slammed down into a cage and wanted out. 

“It ain’t about the stinkin money,” Jack shouted, emphasizing each word so they flew sharp and bullet like at David’s face.

“Then what on earth even is it?” David shouted back.  “I sure as hell can’t make any sense out of it.” 

“Did you ever think that maybe I don’t trust some barber I ain’t never met to go sticking his filthy hand in my mouth?” 

“And you trust _me_ to do it?” David asked.  One look at Jack told David that it was just as he’d feared.  David looked away from him and up at the sky, as though the clouds might have some answers as to what to do.  “Sure,” he said.  “You won’t trust me with more than the tiniest bits of information about your past, like accidentally mentioning how when you were little you had a bed with blue sheets is some kind of huge slip up…” 

“Dave…”

“ _Shut up_.  You don’t even want me to know your real name.  You told me to forget it the one time I brought it up.” 

David closed his mouth tightly, when he realized that Les was watching him like he might cry.  He let out a long breath, but he couldn’t quite get his hands to unclench.  Only Jack could make him act like this… out of the whole entire world, only Jack.  Nobody else could get him quite so mad.

It was a while before anybody said anything.  Finally, Les looked from David to Jack and back again, before saying in a low voice, “I can try and pull the tooth if you want.” 

“Yeah.  Thanks kid.  Let’s do that,” Jack said, looking at David as he spoke.  There was a snarl buried somewhere deep in his words that David sensed only he was meant to hear. 

“No,” David said.  “Look, I’ll handle it.  I guess I just don’t see why you’d trust me in this of all things.  I honestly don’t know the first thing about it.” 

Normally Jack would have grinned in triumph at having won an argument.  This time he only nodded grimly.

—–

David would not have expected the pulling of Jack’s tooth to become a huge event among the newsies of the Duane Street Lodging House, but apparently he had underestimated their desire to see bloodshed.  It made sense, in a Roman Coliseum type of way – a certain fascination in gore and torture was a part of human nature, after all.  David just wished that his friends would find some other part of their nature to embrace while he made his first venture into minor dental surgery.

Jack was, in theory, meant to be sitting on a stool that somebody had dragged up for him, but he kept getting up to pace around every couple of seconds.   Racetrack, Mush, and Blink had taken seats next to each other on the closest bunk, to watch what happened, or provide witness and make sure David was merely convicted of manslaughter and not outright murder if Jack didn’t make it through.  Skittery was reading a few beds away, and quite a few other newsies were milling about. 

The pair of pliers in David’s hands was rusted and greasy in spite of the twenty minutes he’d spent trying to clean them.  Jack claimed to have “obtained” them days before in preparation of the big event.  David didn’t even want to know what the word obtained meant in this instance. 

“Are you ready?” David asked for about the eighth time.  Jack groaned.  Behind him Racetrack had started a pool on how many tries it would take David before he got the tooth out. 

“Sit down.” 

David pressed Jack lightly back down onto the stool by his shoulders, then stood there, passing the pliers back and forth between his hands and trying to think of the most effective way to go about this. 

“Could you hurry up?”  Jack asked.  He tapped his foot as he sat. 

“Right.  Open up.”  David pushed the pliers into the back of Jack’s mouth where the problem tooth was, closed in around it, then promptly let go of the pliers when he felt a shudder go through his patient. 

“Strike one!” Racetrack called out, as Jack removed the pliers from his mouth himself. 

“Don’t do that,” was David’s irritable response.  It must not have been very clear who he’d meant it for, because Jack let his mouth close around the pliers and Racetrack told him that “Cowboy” didn’t mind. 

“You really are okay with it, ain’t you Jack?”  Mush asked, just to be sure.  “We can shut him up for you otherwise.” 

“Mmmph grgle rrrg,” Jack replied. 

“He says he don’t mind, but we gotta hold him back from soaking Davey if he makes it to strike three.” 

David shot a glare back at Racetrack, but then retook hold of the pliers to go in for another try. 

This time he pulled with all his might, and heard a satisfying crack and a much less satisfying shout from Jack.  Jack buried his mouth in his sleeve to muffle it.  David rubbed his back, uncertain of what to do.  He looked up at the other guys, but aside from a sympathetic shrug from Mush, nobody seemed inclined to help.    

“Sorry,” David said quickly, followed by, “Oh god, you’re bleeding…” when Jack lifted his head to spit out the tooth, and revealed the red stain flowering on his shirt.  Jack waved his hand absently as if to say it was fine, but David knew that it _wasn’t_ fine.  His best friend was gushing blood and it was completely his fault. 

“Can you move your mouth?”  David asked. 

Jack nodded.

“You’re not moving it.  Can I see you move it?  Can you talk?” 

“I can talk,” Jack said, before returning his hand to his sleeve.  He was getting paler by the minute, a light sheen of sweat on his face and his skin taking on that weird hue it did when you were about to throw up.  David could see him swallowing to keep whatever food was in his stomach down there.  It was one of the most helpless feelings David had ever had, and he couldn’t imagine how it must feel for Jack.

David made a dash for the washrooms, picked up a towel, and handed it over for Jack to bleed onto, before sitting down next to him.  Things had gone quiet around the lodge.

“Hey Dave?” Jack muttered into his towel, just as the silence was starting to become oppressive. 

“Don’t talk.”  David ordered, and wished he hadn’t.  If there was one sure fire way to get Jack Kelly to do something it was to tell him not to. 

“Just one thing.  See, my appendix has been really bothering my lately. You think you could…” 

Jack hadn’t even finished before Racetrack barked out a laugh.  “Jack’s _fine_ ,” he announced to the other boys.  The effect was like magic.  What started out as a few nervous chuckles turned into a full out ripple of laughter throughout the room.  Even David joined, resting his head in his hands and leaning against Jack’s shoulder as he did so, realizing to his vast relief that Jack was doing the same to him. 


End file.
